The Conversion of St Paul

The Mall in Washington is about 2 miles long. It is a wide strip of green grass that cuts right through the city. At one end of the Mall is the Lincoln Memorial, in the middle of the Mall is the Washington Monument and at the other end of the Mall is the Capitol building where the government of the United States meets. The Mall is very big. It is beautiful and very impressive. Just over forty years ago at the Lincoln Memorial Martin Luther King Jnr gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. His dream as we all know was that the segregation and victimisation of African American people would end in America. His was a simple dream that his children could play with a white mans children – that they would be respected as equals. Then just forty years later at the other end of the Mall on the steps of the Capitol building an African American man was sworn in as the President of the United States. The two mile journey from one end of the Mall to the other in a sense was the journey of an amazing conversion for a nation. The American nation converted from being a nation blighted by racism to a nation where about 80% of its people approve of it first African American President. Many people said that it would or could never happen but it did.

Conversion can happen. People can change. Opinions can change. Things can get better. What is needed for change is commitment and faith. In the midst of all the doom and gloom that surrounds us at the moment no matter how the new President of America works out his election was evidence that commitment and faith works. It was an election where optimism and hope won over pessimism and despair.

St Paul, whose conversion we celebrate today was a bad man. He was self righteous and he caused great pain and suffering to those who he disagreed with. People were afraid of him. Yet God chose him to bring the Good News of Jesus to the Gentiles – to those who were not the chosen people – to everybody in the world no matter what their creed or colour. Paul’s conversion enabled him to see in a new way – with the eyes of Jesus. Seeing in this new way he had the courage and the confidence to leave his home and to leave his native land and to proclaim Jesus. He could do all this because he believed and he had unshakeable faith. Paul was committed to his new way of life and that commitment enabled him to endure terrible suffering in the name of Jesus.

Today in our time we need conversion. We need the gift of conversion. We need to see in a new way – in the way of Jesus for this time. I think that we as the Church need perhaps to be converted to hope. I think that there is a danger where we can continue to lose hope. We can fall into the trap of predicting a grim future for the Church. Then we sit back and wait for that grim future to arrive and then we can take some comfort in the fact that we weren’t out of touch because our prediction was right. If St Paul had adopted that attitude when the first persecution came he would have given up and just said his own private prayers. Then the faith would not have spread to all the countries that he brought it to. If African Americans had adopted that attitude then Martin Luther King’s dream would just have remained that – a dream and one of their own would never have walked up the mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol Building to be President.

We do not have the luxury to wallow in self pity about the reality of the Church today. We do not have the time to engage in negative discussions. Yes we need always to acknowledge and face reality but we need to do it with hope and confidence in Jesus. When we do that we will in our day take up that mantle of St Paul. We will be people of commitment and faith who believe the Good News and at the invitation of Jesus proclaim that Good News. When we do that yes like St Paul we may be laughed at – we may be ridiculed – we may have to suffer but the one thing that we may be sure of is that to those we proclaim the Good News to will never hear better news.